Zootaxa,Paraphyly of Chinese Amolops (Anura, Ranidae) and Phylogenetic Position of The

Paraphyly of Chinese Amolops (Anura, Ranidae) and phylogenetic position of the rare Chinese frog, Amolops tormotus

HONG-XIA CAI1, 2, JING CHE2, JUN-FENG PANG2, ER-MI ZHAO1,4& YA-PING ZHANG2, 3,4 1Key Laboratory of Bio-resources and Eco-environment (Ministry of Education), College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China, 610064 2Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China, 650223 3Laboratory for Conservation and Utilization of Bio-resources, Yunnan University, Kunming, China, 650091 4Corresponding authors. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

Abstract

In order to evaluate the five species groups of Chinese Amolops based on morphological characteristics, and to clarify the phylogenetic position of the concave-eared torrent frog Amolops tormotus, we investigated the phylogeny of Amolops by maximum parsimony, Bayesian Inference, and maximum likelihood methods using two mitochondrial DNA fragments (12S rRNA, 16S rRNA). Our results supported a sister group relationship of Amolops ricketti and Amolops hainanensis. However, the grouping of Amolops mantzorum and Amolops monticola needs to be resolved with more data. Amolops tormotus was nested in genus Odorrana. Thus, recognition of the A. tormotus group is unwarranted and A. tormotus should be referred to genus Odorrana as O. tormota. This species is the sister group of O. nasica plus O. versabilis. The new classification implies that the genus Wurana is to be considered as junior subjective synonym of Odorrana.

Key words: phylogeny, mitochondrial DNA, Amolops, Amolops tormotus, Odorrana tormota

Introduction

Among the Southeast Asian ranids, Amolops Cope, 1865 (sensu lato: Dubois, 1992) is characterized by the presence of an abdominal sucker in tadpoles and its peculiar occurrence in torrents. Since the taxonomy of this group was questioned (Inger, 1966), significant advances have been achieved in the past few years. Yang (1991a) recognized three distinct genera including Amolops Cope, 1865, Huia Yang, 1991, and Mer- istogenys Yang, 1991. Later, Yang (1991b) united these genera into the subfamily Amolopinae within the Ranidae. However, Dubois (1992) did not accept these taxonomic schemes and merely relegated Yang’s three genera as subgenera within his genus Amolops, along with the subgenus Amo. In China, Jiang et al. (1997) added Pseudoamolops to the Amolopinae, with Rana sauteri as the type species. However, the monophyly of Amolops or Amolopinae was not independently verified using molecular data until very recently (e.g., Matsui et al., 2006; Ngo et al., 2006; Frost et al., 2006). Most species of Amolops sensu stricto, the type genus of Amolopinae (Yang, 1991b) or subgenus of Amol- ops sensu lato (Dubois, 1992), are distributed in China (Yang, 1991a; Frost et al., 2007). They are divided into five groups: A. tormotus, A. monticola, A. mantzorum, A. marmoratus and A. hainanensis groups (Fei et al., 2005). Matsui et al. (2006) and Ngo et al. (2006) studied some Chinese species of Amolops. However, data were lacking for the A. tormotus group. The concave-eared frog A. tormotus, initially classified as Rana tormotus by Wu (1977), has ultrasonic

Accepted by M. Vences: 18 Jun. 2007; published: 23 Jul. 2007 49